That power of production helped win the war. It was America’s long-awaited power of production finally rolling into the far places where it had to go.” Watching the mountain of supplies on Sicily’s shores grow higher and higher, an idea dawned on Pyle: “Suddenly I realized what all this was. “We kept pouring men and machines into Sicily,” Pyle observed, “as though it were a giant hopper.”Īmerican abundance of natural resources-and the ability to mobilize and focus them-gave the Allied soldiers, sailors, and airmen a tremendous advantage.Īn assembly line near Niagara Falls, NY producing fighter planes for the American war effort. In subsequent days, other supplies would follow: food, fuel, ammunition, spare parts, medicine, maps, cigarettes, tents, radios and telephones, and much, much more-everything that a modern army needed, and modern armies needed a lot. Many landing craft carried not people but supplies 20 carried water alone. Those ships delivered 180,000 soldiers onshore but also 14,000 vehicles, 600 tanks, and 1,800 large guns-half of this huge quantity during the attack's first 48 hours. tanks in Tunisia in July 1943 prior to Operation Husky. It covered half the skyline.Even to be part of it was frightening." "On the horizon it resembled a distant city. “There is no way of conveying the enormous size of that fleet,” wrote Pyle. Pyle had sailed with Allied troops across the Mediterranean from North Africa.īefore D-day in Normandy eleven months later, the Sicily campaign-Operation Husky-was the largest seaborne invasion in history, involving an astonishing armada of nearly 3,000 ships. Seventy-five years ago, in late summer 1943, famed war correspondent Ernie Pyle sat above a newly constructed port in Sicily-the island near Italy's toe that Anglo-American forces had invaded in early July-taking in the scene below.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |